such uncertain times
by thehybridmikaelson
Summary: Klaus offers them a choice: Damon's life, Stefan's freedom, or her own. Caroline chooses to leave with him. But why would Klaus want her? (Eventual) Klaroline


**Disclaimer:** I don't own The Vampire, but if anyone wants to contribute a very large sum of money or but it for me, I wouldn't say no. Currently, though, nope.

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1

It wasn't that she disliked it. It was impossible not to hate _him_, of course, because he was a monster and he killed people and he made _her_ do it, too, when she didn't want to. It was _drink from her, love, or I will_, which she knew very well would be so much worse for whichever poor soul he'd picked for her to drain. And, of course, Caroline enjoyed it. Every single _bloody_ time, she loved it. That feeling of warm, living delicious blood, in her mouth and flowing down her throat and dribbling over her chin and on her hands. The blood seemed to give her power, and she loved it, loved—

and then she would realize that this was a person she was drinking from and pull away, compel her to forget and leave, and throw him a smile that said _you can make me drink, but you can't make me kill_. She got all that courage because he never even tried to stop her, though she couldn't think of a reason for that. He'd smirk at her, like he didn't care, but she could tell that her defiance got to him. Well, she thought it did. There was never really any telling with him, of course, except when he got really angry and threw a bitch fit. That had happened once in the last week, and she'd been _so_ sure he was going to kill her. He hadn't.

"You're making me regret not making my deal with Stefan instead. The ripper of Monterrey would have been a lot more fun than you are." He said 'ripper' like 'ripp-_ah_', and it never failed to make her want to laugh, the hysterical kind, because obviously it wasn't funny at all. The only good part to her being here was that Stefan was back in Mystic Falls with Elena, both the Salvatore brothers keeping her safely away from Klaus. As long as she could keep Klaus pre-occupied with her and his whole find-a-werewolf mission, Elena would be okay, probably the furthest thing from his mind, she hoped. And that was what was_ really_ important. So she'd play along with Klaus' dumb demands, do as much as she could to hold onto her morals and not drain people as long as he let her; she knew that one day he'd have had enough of her resistance and compel her to kill them, and then he wouldn't stop. But she'd take it, because it kept her friends and family safe in Mystic Falls. Caroline could be fierce, believe it or not.

"So why did you take me?" She'd shot back, arms crossed, ignoring the blood ruining her shirt, not really expecting a reply.

And, no, it wasn't that she disliked it at all. It was that she _loved_ it. And that was exactly the problem. She loved the blood, of course. She was a vampire, and there was nothing she could do to stop her bloodlust. He'd present her a girl to drain dry, and she'd leave the innocent human being who didn't deserve that at _all_ with enough blood to sustain her, and no memory of _how_ she'd come across that animal that had attacked her and left her with that awful wound on her neck. She'd tried to heal one of them on her second day, but he'd snapped her (not Caroline's, though she didn't see what harm that would do to her) neck clean off before she could even press her wrist to the human girl's mouth. "Compel them to forget if you want, love," he'd said, and she'd tried her very best not to glare at him for the endearment. "But I won't have you healing them."

Well, she'd take what she got. At the very least, he'd not made her kill the ones she compelled to leave. She had killed one, the very first night. _I want you to enjoy the hunt_, he'd said, and she had. He would, eventually, make her drain girls dry even when she had the control enough to stop. Come on, this was Klaus they were talking about. He'd taken her for a reason.

She didn't know what that reason was, though. He'd not told her, and she'd not really felt up to asking. He didn't seem against answering her questions, but she didn't want to seem too curious. Or curious at all, really, even though she was. She'd asked him once and only gotten a "All will be explained in time, sweetheart." She was there with him against her will, remember? And it _was_, mostly. Damon had been dying, and it _was_ sort of her fault that he had been, because Tyler had bit him when Damon had come to save them. In return, she figured it was only fair that she go with Klaus when he suggested that there were other options to saving Damon's life. Stefan could go with him, accompany him on his travels—or she could. Stefan had obviously been completely against it, _I can't let you do this, Caroline_, but she wasn't about to let that happen.

How much help would she be in keeping Elena behind? Elena would want to find Stefan, Damon would probably not be able to say no to Elena and would be looking himself, brotherly bond and all; and Klaus would eventually figure out that she was alive and then they were _all_ dead. This way, she would hope that Damon and Stefan would manage to keep Elena out of Klaus' way. Damon was smart (sometimes) and wouldn't care about her very much, and definitely not more than he cared about making sure Elena stayed alive. He'd stop her, and Stefan would listen. Caroline wasn't hoping for or expecting a rescue mission, even though she would like to be rescued, obviously.

But this was how Klaus saw it: "You made a deal with me, sweetheart, and you made it quite willingly. If I've kept up my end of the bargain, why do you find it so difficult in keeping up yours?" Well, when you make a deal with the freaking _devil_, you got a much tougher end of the bargain than he did. And, see, that wasn't exactly how it had gone. She'd gotten a call during the screening of Gone With The Wind from Stefan. She'd figured it was something to do with Damon, whatever, this was important, right? But he'd called her to Alaric's place, which really just meant he'd called her to Klaus' place. Obviously, because it was Stefan and he was almost wheezing when he'd said please, she'd gone and found him there on the floor looking very much in pain, _Katherine_ looking almost stressed out, which was weird already. Oh, and Klaus, smirking widely when he saw her there.

"Ah, Caroline," he'd said, looking almost friendly and not like he'd just tried to sacrifice her, and _had_ just sacrificed Elena and Jenna and Jules (not that the last bothered her much, the _bitch_). Caroline who, at this point, had never really met him before and had never wanted to meet him, preferably ever, had ignored him and gone to Stefan.

"Are you okay?" She'd asked, and he'd grimaced and apologized for calling her, _I'm so sorry, Caroline_, but really, there was nothing more to it. Klaus had been smiling like he was having the best day of his life, and, yeah, he probably had been.

"Where were we?" Klaus asked, then turned to Stefan, crouching low to look at him. "Ah, yes. Caroline, did you know, there was this one vampire I've heard of, crazy bloke, always on and off the wagon for decades. When he was off, he was _magnificent_." He smirked at Stefan, then turned to her, smirking. "1917, he went into Monterrey and wiped out an entire migrant village." All this he said like it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever heard. Paused, smirked, then said, "A true ripper."

_Ripp-ah_. Stefan had looked down, and it had dawned on Caroline just as Klaus said, "Sound familiar?" A tense pause had followed. Honestly, while Caroline had known that Stefan had fallen off the wagon many times, this was _Stefan_ they were talking about. Stefan, who'd taught her how to eat bunnies and not people, the one who'd told her that he wouldn't let anything happen to her. It didn't seem possible that he'd destroyed an entire village in bloodlust. It was just didn't.

"I haven't been that way in a very long time." Stefan said. Klaus hadn't looked particularly happy about that, obviously.

He took a gulp out of the glass of blood he was holding. "Well, that's the vampire I can make a deal with. That is the kind of talent I can use when I leave this town." Caroline had struggled not to scoff, because _talent_, seriously? This was, she'd figured, good enough time to ask why she was there. So she had; to which he'd smiled at her and said, "All in good time, love." _Love_, he called her. She liked that even less than she liked the way he'd said Caroline when she'd first come in. And then, "Katerina, come here."

She'd watched his face change as Katherine placed her hand in his, and she saw him bite Katherine without the least bit of feeling sorry for the Queen Bitch. (She'd almost smiled, but hadn't really.) Katherine's screams for _no_ had actually been slightly terrifying; because what was the point of this? Then he'd bitten his own arm and stuffed it inside Katherine's mouth and she'd watched Katherine's wound heal as quickly as it had formed. Klaus had a smug almost-smile on his face that _terrified_ Caroline. "You want your cure?" He'd asked. "There it is."

"Your blood is the cure." She'd said, hopefully not sounding as freaked out as she was. Klaus had _really_ smiled then, smug bastard.

"Gotta love Mother Nature." He'd said, then patted Stefan's arm and looked down at her as he passed by her and _oh God was he looking at her boobs? Ew, that was disgusting, the _creep_, and why had she worn this top?_ Klaus had said it was time to talk, but there wasn't really all that much talking done. Seated at Rick's counter, he'd asked Stefan for a decade-long bender, which, obviously, Stefan had refused, _duh_, because he wasn't like that anymore. At any rate, he'd been ignoring her almost completely, giving her two bags of blood and then leaving her alone until, when he was dropping the _nth_ blood bag in front of Stefan to empty, she'd said (more like screamed),

"Stop it!" He'd turned to her, looking freaking _amused_, like all this was a freaking joke. To him, it might have been, but Stefan couldn't handle blood properly and it really needed to _stop_, and Klaus was a sick freak. "Just, give me as many blood bags as you want, I'll drink it all, but leave Stefan alone." Also, Caroline would hurl blood if she saw Stefan drain another one of the blood bags, looking like he wanted to throw up—but also not, in a way.

"Ah, Caroline, _protecting_ Stefan. Isn't it ironic how the baby vampire has so much more control than you do? Unfortunately for Stefan, the blood doesn't control you as it controls him, and it is so much _fun_ to watch him struggle." He dropped the bag and Stefan shook his head. His mouth and chin were completely bloodied, and his eyes were insane. _Scary_ insane, and this was Stefan they were talking about.

"No more. Not until you give me the cure." Stefan said. Klaus had given them both a look, and then launched into the deal. Here it was; if the deal was made, Damon would be given the cure. If a deal wasn't made, Klaus would keep forcing Stefan to do this until he took the option to walk out. And their choices were these; either she, or Stefan, would embrace what they truly were, i.e., _vampires_ without any morals scope; one of them had to leave Mystic Falls with Klaus for as long as he wanted, which could very well be longer than Caroline had even been _alive_, she knew.

Stefan had taken the blood bag, and Klaus had looked quite happy. Of course, Caroline was having none of it, so she stopped him. "No," she'd said, and Klaus had surprisingly looked even happier. "I'll go with you, Klaus."

("No, Caroline!")

Well, basically, she'd not even made the deal for Damon, except she sort of _had_. She'd made the deal for Stefan, because if she didn't, then he'd leave with Klaus and that would sort of suck. If what she'd gotten a preview of was anything to go by, Stefan would be tortured with blood the entire time he was with Klaus, and if she had anything to say about it, it would not happen. So, no, she hadn't gone with him willingly, except she sort of had. _That's the spirit_, he'd said, and she'd never been more scared.

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**Currently unsure of exactly how it's going to go, so I'm really just uploading this as a tester to the response and will continue it depending on that. The chapters _will_ get longer if I do continue. Hope it's any good, I've not exactly proofread it. I will be looking for a beta sooner or later, I guess. Maybe. Probably. Do review with your thoughts!**


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